


In Memoriam

by Enochian Things (Salr323)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Episode: s07e02 Hello Cruel World, Gen, Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 10:44:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4957303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salr323/pseuds/Enochian%20Things
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Dean’s lost people before, but this is different – this cuts deep in a dozen different directions."</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Memoriam

**Author's Note:**

> Ouch, season 7. Like Dean, I don't really know where Cas is right now but I'm counting the episodes until he comes back...

He finds Dean outside, leaning against the hood of the Impala with his gimpy leg propped out in front, staring up at the sky. 

It’s a clear night and the heavens are beautiful over the mountains, brilliant with stars in that mocking way the universe has of kicking you when you’re down. Bobby thinks that God’s probably bastard enough to lay on the display just to screw with Dean’s mind.

Enough light spills from Rufus’s cabin that he can see what Dean’s got clutched in his hands and the sight doesn’t do much to improve Bobby’s mood. It’s Castiel’s coat, his blood still running in watery streaks through the fabric. The kid held on to his father’s jacket in just the same way, like it was a talisman or a promise, and Bobby’s heart settles heavier in his chest. He lifts the beer to his lips, but doesn’t speak. Truth is, he doesn’t know what to say. Dean’s lost people before, but this is different – this cuts deep in a dozen different directions. 

“You got something to say, or you just gonna stand there watching?” Dean doesn’t turn around when he speaks, just keeps staring out into the black of the night. But Bobby’s not surprised he knew he was there; no one creeps up on Dean Winchester in the dark. 

With a sigh he walks closer, boots crunching on the gravel as he comes to prop himself against the hood next to Dean. He glances down at the coat, a rumpled crush of fabric in Dean’s hands. It still looks damp from the water and he wonders where Dean’s been keeping it. “Maybe we should bury it,” he suggests. “Say our goodbyes properly.”

Dean doesn’t answer, but his fingers tighten on the coat. Which is exactly what Bobby was expecting, although he thinks it would be easier on Dean if he could just let it go – let Cas go. But when does Dean ever make it easy for himself? 

He takes another mouthful of beer, a little Dutch courage. “You think he’s coming back.” 

“Wouldn’t be the first time.” Dean’s eyes are bright with challenge. “Why? Don’t you?”

He lifts his shoulders, lets them fall into a shrug. “It looked pretty final,” he says. “But it’s Cas. Anything’s possible, I guess.”

“Yeah.” Dean nods, but his jaw’s clenching like he’s biting down on whatever it is he’s feeling. “Anything’s possible.”

They let the silence drift, the night air cool and fresh. Inside the cabin, Sam’s crashed out on the sofa, doing battle with the demons Cas unleashed. Even asleep the kid looks pale, his skin drawn and spare across the bones of his face. “If he comes back,” Bobby says, “I’m gonna kick his freakin’ ass for what he did to Sam.”

“Get in line,” Dean growls, but Bobby’s watching his hands, the way his thumb is smoothing over the fabric of the coat, and he knows it’s not that simple.

Not blind to the irony, he decides to play devil’s advocate. “Still,” he says, “everyone makes mistakes, I guess.” 

Dean glares. “ _Mistakes_?”

“Big ones,” he concedes, and takes a swallow of beer to escape that hard gaze. “Angel sized mistakes.”

“Unforgivable mistakes,” Dean says. “Unforgivable fucking mistakes, Bobby. What he did to Sam? I can’t—” He shakes his head, his hands no longer gentle on the coat but crushing it like he could throttle the damn thing. “If he comes back, I swear I’ll— I’ll—” His voice thickens, head dips, and Bobby thinks it would be so much less painful if he could simply hate Castiel. 

But the angel had never been simple and his relationship with Dean even less so. 

He lets out a sigh, breathy with beer. It’s late and he’s tired. He’s so tired of all of this – the loss, the pain, the fight without end. “You remember what you said after Rufus died? At the grave?” When Dean doesn’t reply, Bobby reminds him. “You said ‘clean slate’ – all our sins forgiven.”

Dean grunts, a grudging acknowledgment rather than agreement. “This is different,” he says. “This is _Sam_. And it was deliberate, Bobby. It was fucking deliberate. For months. And I can’t—” His voice clots. “I can’t just let it go, man. I can’t.”

Bobby’s not sure if he’s talking about Cas’s mistakes, or Cas himself. It’s probably both. “You got some unfinished business, that’s for sure,” he says. “But whatever he was at the end, Cas was your friend first. More than that, even.” 

Dean gives him a sharp look and Bobby raises his hands, defensive. “His palm print is branded into your skin, boy. That’s not nothing. That’s not just a couple of beers at a Saturday night barbeque. You gotta let yourself mourn him. ”

“I don’t _want_ to mourn him,” he spits. “I don’t want to think about him, about what he did, about where he’s—” He throws the coat onto the ground, kicks it away with his bad leg. “I should just burn the fucking thing.”

“In case he comes back to haunt us?”

There’s a bottle of Jack Daniel’s sitting on the hood next to Dean and he snags it up, taking a long drink. He’s been doing that a lot lately, and Bobby’s pretty sure that one way or another Cas is already haunting him. “I hate him for what he did to Sam,” Dean says at last, all bitter edges and bile. “I _hate_ him, Bobby, but I can’t stop—” He takes another drink, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. “I can’t get the bastard out of my head.”

“Because you miss him,” Bobby says, prodding at the wound. Damn thing needs to be opened before it festers. “Because you’re grieving for your _friend_.”

“Bullcrap,” Dean growls, and takes another drink. “I’m glad the bastard’s dead. I’d have done it myself, if I could.”

“Don’t mean you’re not grieving.”

Dean’s silent then, and whether he’s processing that idea or just stewing, Bobby can’t tell. After a while Dean settles the whiskey in his lap and tips his head up to the sky. His shoulders sag and it looks too much like defeat, like he’s letting go the life raft and starting to sink. “I should have stopped him,” he whispers, breathes the words like a sacred confession. “I should have—” His voice sinks lower, roughens at the edges. “I let him down, Bobby.”

Even for Dean, it’s an impressive nosedive into self-reproach. “ _You_ let _him_ down?”

Dean shakes his head, his gaze still fixed on the stars. Maybe he thinks he can see Cas up there, somewhere. “I should’ve known,” he says. “I should’ve known things weren’t right. I _did_ know. Cas hasn’t been right for months, not since he first came back, and I just— I ignored it, I dismissed it. I just assumed he’d be okay, that he’d always be ... be Cas.” 

“Dean,” Bobby sighs, “come on. It’s not like we’ve been sitting around with our thumbs up our asses for the past year. No one expected you to babysit a freakin’ angel.”

Dean’s head dips, his gaze travelling from the heavens down to the coat sprawled in the dirt at his feet. “All those times he told us the war was going badly for him, what did we do? Nothing. Angel business, right? We just thought it was fuckin’ angel business.” 

“What _could_ we have done?” Bobby asks, perplexed. “We had our hands full with Sam, and Samuel, and Crowley... And it’s not like we could just mosey on up to heaven and fight his battles for him.”

“We could have asked,” Dean snaps. “We could have given a damn! Maybe then he’d have told us about his bullshit plan and we could have stopped him before he— Before it was too late.”

“Yeah, which is exactly why he _didn’t_ tell us – why he would _never_ have told us.” 

“You don’t know that.”

“He was lying to us for months! He spied on us, worked with Crowley behind our backs. You think you and he having a little heart-to-heart was ever going to change that?”

There’s a stubborn twitch in Dean’s jaw. “Yeah, I do. I know Cas.” His lets out a bitter sigh. “I _knew_ Cas. And he was so much better than what he became, Bobby. So much better.”

And there’s such a confusion of anger and hurt in those words that it keeps Bobby silent while Dean takes another long pull on the bottle. 

Into the quiet that follows he says, “For what it’s worth, I think Cas’s intentions were always good...”

“Yeah, well,” Dean snorts, “you know what paves the road to Hell.” He stands up, takes an awkward step forward. He’s still holding the whisky and Bobby wonders whether he’s going to splash it over Castiel's coat and drop a match on the damn thing after all. “He saved me, Bobby,” he says. “The least I could have done was return the favor.”

That gives him pause. “What are you talking about?”

When he looks up there’s a wild look in Dean’s eyes, an angry panic. Bobby’s seen that look before, whenever Dean feels trapped or helpless. “They caged Lucifer in the pit for rebelling against God – what the fuck do you think they’ll do to the dude who tried to replace Him?”

“You think Cas is in Hell?”

“I think Crowley would love to get his claws into him.” Dean’s mouth twists, as if he’s tasting something foul – or remembering something worse, something that drains the color from his face. “I think there’s a lot of freakin’ demons who’d like to get Cas on the rack. A lot of angels too.”

Bobby swallows hard against that image. No matter what he’d become in the end, Castiel had been a pure soul once and the thought of him trapped in that place... “You gave him a shot at redemption,” he says, talking quiet, like he used to do when Dean was a kid and going out of his mind with worry about his brother or his dad. “Maybe that’ll be enough?”

“Enough to keep him out of the pit?” Dean’s scornful. “Doubt it.” 

“You don’t know that’s where he is,” Bobby says, firmer now. “Who’d have sent him down there? God? Cas tore up the rule book, Dean. You can’t assume anything anymore.”

“Well Cas isn’t in heaven,” Dean says, throwing out the words like accusation. “Because if he was, he’d come when I— And he’s not on Earth, or he’d be here to help Sam. So where else does that leave?”

Bobby lets out a breath, stands up to put a hand on Dean’s shoulder and look him in the eye. “Maybe he’s just gone,” he says. “And maybe that’s the best we could hope for him, all things considered.” He gestures at the coat with his beer bottle and decides to roll the dice. “Maybe we _should_ burn it. Let him go and hope he can rest in peace.”

“No,” Dean says immediately. “No, I— I can’t.”

“Okay.” And somehow that feels like a win, because if Dean had burned the coat Bobby’s pretty damn sure that a piece of Dean’s soul would have burned along with it. “But, so help me,” he adds, with a wry twist of his lips, “if you start wearing the damn thing...”

“I’m not gonna wear it,” Dean growls. Then, almost self-conscious, he stoops down, awkward with his plastered leg, and snatches the coat up. Then he just stands there holding it like he doesn’t know what the hell to do with it – much like he doesn’t know what the hell to do with his feelings about its owner. 

Bobby says nothing and after a few moments he watches as Dean makes his way around to the back of the car, refolds Cas’s coat and settles it in the trunk with a tenderness that near breaks his heart. He has to drain his beer just to swallow the lump in his throat. 

It’s not much by way of memorial or forgiveness, but for now Bobby thinks that just holding on to Castiel’s coat – holding on to his memory, no matter how bloodstained and dirty – is probably the best Dean can do.

And probably more than Castiel deserves.

END

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed. :) You can find me on Tumblr as [enochian-things](http://www.enochian-things.tumblr.com/) so come and say hi! :)


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